Guitar Hero versus Violin Virtuoso

Sigur Rós at Somerset House, London
Originally uploaded by production designer matt

I said a bit about Joe Moretti's session at the recent Apple RTC meeting in Southampton. I forgot to mention he said he'd read that peripatetic teachers of guitar now outnumber teachers of violins in schools. His comment, if I remember correctly, was:

"Isn't that dreadful... why are so many kids being forced to learn violin?"

I couldn't find the report he referred to, but this one seems close:

Violin losing out to guitar in music lessons | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk

a government-backed study has found that guitars and drums are, in fact, becoming the instruments of choice in the classroom.

Not everyone will share Joe's pleasure in this finding... but the solution seems obvious - do a Jimmy Page and play the guitar with a bow. :-)

(*I discovered today that it was David McCallum Snr, father of David McCallum the actor (Illya Kuryakin in the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) who suggested to Jimmy that he could use a bow on his guitar.*)

I assume that part of the reason for this shift is that guitar and drums seem more relevant to children's experience of music. I'm reminded of the attempts to convince Daughter Number 2 that playing the flute was a good idea. Her music teacher suggested she should listen to James Gallway, but this failed to inspire. I tried Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull - but that was dad rock and that too failed to impress. Her sister, Daughter Number 1, seemed to come closest when she found the beatboxing flautist on YouTube. Relevance matters and dads (and teachers?) rarely manage to pull it off!

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